When the earth starts to shake and buildings begin to fall, who are you gonna call? Dwayne Johnson! When the fault cracks in two which the tsunami rolls into, who’ll see you through? Dwayne Johnson!

Disaster movies were a thing of the 70s for a short while, all-star casts of big stars put at risk by natural or man-made disasters. Irwin Allen was the king of these films, and things like The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake and The Towering Inferno were big box office champs back in the day. These days, most of those disaster effects are done on computers which you’d think would save money in the budget for amazing casts but here in this 21st century disaster movie, after legitimate stars Johnson and Giamatti as well as next-tier stars Gugino, Daddario, Panjabi and Gruffudd, things get a little thin. Where’s William Holden when you really need him?

Ray (Johnson) is a LAFD rescue helicopter pilot whose devotion to his job increased exponentially when one of his daughters drowned during a rafting trip and he was unable to save her. His remaining daughter Blake (Daddario) adores daddy, but he emotionally shut down after the tragedy and after trying and trying his wife Emma (Gugino) is now his ex-wife and is moving into the palatial mansion of architect Daniel Reddick (Gruffudd) who seems like a genuinely nice guy. When a massive earthquake in Nevada ruptures the Hoover Dam, forcing an all hands on deck call to any rescue helicopter pilots in the neighborhood, Ray has to cancel on a planned road trip to take his baby girl to college. She instead hitches a ride to San Francisco with Daniel. And Emma takes a lunch with his bitchy sister (Minogue).

That’s when Big One #2 hits, in Los Angeles. Ray is forced to save his own wife from a collapsing high rise and when they realize that Big One #3 is going to hit San Francisco at any moment – thanks to earthquake predicting software developed by Dr. Lawrence (Giamatti) whose partner (Lee) was buried alive in the Hoover Dam thing. Now Ray and Emma are heading up to San Francisco to rescue Blake who has been abandoned by the as-it-turns-out cowardly Daniel and has hooked up with a lovestruck Brit named Ben (Johnstone-Burt) and his precocious little brother Ollie (Parkinson).

The effects-heavy San Andreas features lots of buildings and other structures collapsing, people crushed by fallen masonry, a tsunami that takes down the Golden Gate Bridge and Ray driving anything that isn’t nailed down be it on land, in the air or at sea. There’s plenty of shark jumping and WTF moments that will turn your brain into peanut butter if you think about it too hard. My advice is, just don’t think about it and go with the flow.

Other than the adequate and occasionally delightful effects, the big draw here is Johnson. He’s not the most accomplished actor on any given set, but he doesn’t need to be, particularly on movies like this. He gets by on his irresistible charm, his rippling biceps and his genuine heart. You can’t help but like the guy no matter who he’s playing; it will be interesting to see what he does with a villain role in the upcoming comic book hero movie Shazam. Here even at the movie’s most godawful plot moments, he rescues it just by being himself.

Writer Carlton Cuse (Lost) doesn’t deliver his best work here which is kind of a shame; I would have loved to see his ability to draw up fascinating characters in impossible situations transplanted here, but the movie is just so engaging in terms of effects and disaster goodness that it’s hard to really fault Cuse for not bringing on the A game here. This isn’t going to break box office records, nor is it going to redefine the summer blockbuster. While it could have used a more judicious hand in the editing room – dodging falling buildings repetitively gets pretty old after awhile – it nonetheless accomplishes what most of us are looking for this time of year which is a fun ride at the movie theater.

REASONS TO GO: Dwayne Johnson saves the day. Fun summer entertainment.REASONS TO STAY: Paint-by-numbers plot. Probably a good half hour too long.FAMILY VALUES: Intense action, disaster mayhem and a few choice curse words here and there.TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Riddick’s San Francisco headquarters is actually the Bank of America building, the same building (enhanced with optical effects) that was used for the 1974 disaster classic The Towering Inferno.CRITICAL MASS:As of 6/16/15: Rotten Tomatoes: 50% positive reviews. Metacritic: 43/100.COMPARISON SHOPPING:EarthquakeFINAL RATING: 6/10NEXT:Peace, Love and Misunderstanding

SAN ANDREAS

All Californians know that the big one is inevitable and now it is upon them. As a 9.0 quake rocks Southern California, a daring rescue helicopter pilot and his estranged wife take a perilous journey north to find their daughter, off to college in San Francisco. However, as bad as things were, they may only be the beginning of worse things yet to come.

See the trailer, interviews, and a clip here. For more on the movie this is the website. Release Formats: Standard Genre: Disaster Now Playing: Wide Release (opens Thursday)Rating: PG-13 (for intense disaster action and mayhem throughout, and brief strong language)

Aloha

(Columbia) Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, Rachel McAdams, Bill Murray. A military contractor, once celebrated but now more of an industry joke because of a meltdown, returns to the scenes of his greatest triumphs – the U.S. Space program in Honolulu. He reconnects with an ex-girlfriend while falling unexpectedly for a fast-burning U.S. Air Force liaison. In between his romantic conundrum, he is working on an intricate satellite system for an enigmatic billionaire whose intentions aren’t entirely clear. Just another day at the office.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, featurettes, a promo and B-roll video here. For more on the movie this is the website. Release Formats: Standard Genre: Dramedy Now Playing: Wide Release (opens Thursday)Rating: PG-13 (for some language including suggestive comments)

I’ll See You in My Dreams

(Bleecker Street) Blythe Danner, June Squibb, Malin Akerman, Sam Elliott. A widow in her 70s finds her comfortable routine shaken up. This causes her to reassess her views on love, death and family and now in her golden years, she decides to start dating again and in doing so falls into relationships with two very different men, leaving her with quite the quandary.

See the trailer and clips here. For more on the movie this is the website. Release Formats: Standard Genre: Drama Now Playing: Regal Winter Park VillageRating: PG-13 (for sexual material, drug use and brief strong language)

In the Name of My Daughter

(Cohen Media Group) Catherine Deneuve, Guillaume Canet, Adele Haenel, Judith Chemla. The brilliant French director André Téchiné brings us back to Nice in 1976 and one of the most notorious crimes in French history. When a casino heiress falls in love and marries a shady lawyer, her new husband manipulates her into voting against her mother and turning the casino over to the mob. Her subsequent disappearance and her husband’s hasty emigration to Panama lead her mother to believe that her daughter was murdered and her husband had a hand in it. She swears to see justice done, even though it takes decades.

See the trailer here. For more on the movie this is the website. Release Formats: Standard Genre: True Life Drama Now Playing: Regal Winter Park VillageRating: PG-13 (for innuendo and language)

Tanu Weds Manu Returns

(Eros International) Kangana Ranaut, Madhavan, Jimmy Shergill, Eljaz Khan. The sequel to a hit Bollywood film, the marriage between Tanu and Manu collapses as many do. When lovely Manu meets a man who looks exactly like her ex-husband, what will she do when Tanu returns, seeking to patch things up?

See the trailer here. For more on the movie this is the website. Release Formats: Standard Genre: Romantic Comedy Now Playing: AMC West OaksRating: NR

Making sense can be overrated. Our world is a series of contradictions made by hypocrites and swallowed whole by most of us who merely want to live our lives without too much interference. Sometimes it feels like an eccentric French movie that we’re all taking part in.

Leos Carax can feel your pain, ladies and gentlemen. He knows exactly how you feel. Fortunately, as a director of eccentric French movies, he can do something about it.

We meet Monsieur Oscar (Lavant) on a movie screen (don’t ignore the preamble in which a sleeping man finds himself hearing sounds of a harbor while planes land at the airport outside his window, then proceeds to use a key growing out of his finger to open a door which leads into a movie theater – that’s director Carax himself, setting you up for the rest of the film) in which he appears to be

Monsieur Oscar climbs into the back of a limousine, driven by the taciturn Celine (Scob) into Paris to drive him from place to place for a series of appointments. He is given a file as he approaches each one. When he arrives at each destination and exits the limousine, he is not the same as he entered the limousine.

In one location he’s an old crone begging for change, mumbling about how sad her lot in life is. The next he’s a virtual reality ninja warrior whose shortcomings lead him into a reptilian sex session with…well, a kind of snake-like alien dragon thingy. Then he’s a nearly-mute chain-smoking sewer-dwelling troglodyte who kidnaps a supermodel (Mendes) from a famous Paris cemetery (where the headstones read “see my website”) and takes her to his subterranean lair where he changes her dress into a Muslim outfit after which he strips naked and lays with his head in her lap (and with a raging erection) while she sings him to sleep with a lullaby.

He’s a disapproving father with an unpopular teenage daughter who lies about her misery. Which gives him a full opportunity to show what assholes fathers can be. Then he meets an old lover (Minogue) for possibly the last time, in a bittersweet melancholy musical number – you read that right, a musical number. Not so much with dancing and production effects but more a solo act with a certain wistfulness. It’s actually quite moving.

He’s an assassin killing someone who looks suspiciously like himself. He’s an old man on his deathbed consoling his beloved niece and saying goodbye. And finally, he’s a family man with a highly unusual family.

We get the sense that he’s being filmed in all of these appointments – for whom? What for? The inside of his limousine is much bigger than the outside, a kind of low-tech TARDIS with a make-up table and costumes – tall enough to stand up in, although from the outside it wouldn’t appear so.

There are connections to other films here. Scob, who once starred in a horror film called Eyes Without a Face dons the mask she wore in that film near the end of this one. Lavant’s troglodyte character has also made a previous appearance – in the Carax-directed segment of the anthology film Tokyo!complete with the same Godzilla-like musical accompaniment. His appearance is far more brief here (and thankfully, no courtroom scene afterwards) but like all of the scenes is oddly touching in one way or another.

Da Queen had a hard time with this movie. She’s not really into movies that don’t have some kind of sense. To her and to others who find this a hard movie to get behind, the thing to remember here is that this is a film meant to be experienced rather than watched passively. You are meant to let the images and dialogue wash over you and let it take you wherever your mind wanders to.

I admit that I have to be in the right frame of mind for a film like this and I wasn’t completely there when I saw it at the Enzian. Not all the segments connected with me (the crone sequence for example was too brief and nothing really happened; the father/daughter sequence just rang false to me) but those that did connected deeply, either through the fascinating images or the places they took my mind/heart/both to.

Lavant gives a magnificent performance, his pliable face changing with each segment. Each mood that is engineered here is different from the one that preceded it, sometimes subtly. Overall there’s a kind of bittersweet vibe that is like a moment of nostalgia for a moment that has been lived once and will never be lived in again. There is enough whimsy to bring a smile to the face but not enough to get us to French surreality – this is no Cirque du Soleil.

This isn’t a movie that spoonfeeds things to its audience; you have to work for it and use your noggin and your heart. That might not be why you go to the movies – you might be looking to turn your mind and heart off for an hour or two and that’s okay. Holy Motors is a movie for people who like puzzles, who like a good challenge. It’s abstract art and what you bring into the theater is largely going to determine how you view Holy Motors. It’s not for everybody – but it might be for you.

REASONS TO STAY: Can be disjointed and jarring. Doesn’t always make sense.

FAMILY VALUES: There are some disturbing images, sexuality and brief graphic nudity, some violence and bad language.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The supermodel part was written with Kate Moss in mind and offered to her; she seriously considered it but her impending wedding was more of a priority (imagine that) so she passed. The part went to Eva Mendes instead but the character is still called Kay M in honor of who it was written for.

HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS

Fifteen years after nearly being cooked alive at the hands of a naughty witch, brother and sister Hansel and Gretel have taken up the mantle of witch hunters, using ingenious weapons to battle the evil creatures. However, their success has made them a target and their past is about to catch up with them in a malevolent way. This is most certainly not your mom and dad’s fairy tale.

Holy Motors

(Indomina) Denis Lavant, Edith Scob, Eva Green, Kylie Minogue. A man steps into a limousine and heads out into Paris for a series of appointments. The man changes with each appointment from a captain of industry to a gypsy crone, to an assassin to the melancholy father of a teenage daughter. The movie changes to from drama to action film to science fiction to melodrama. Experimental French cinema at its finest.

Movie 43

(Universal) Halle Berry, Gerard Butler, Richard Gere, Emma Stone. An ambitious ensemble piece from some of the most deliciously twisted minds in comedy, including the Farrelly Brothers, Steven Brill and…Brett Ratner. Okay, the last was sarcastic but there really are some talented guys here. Just ask them. But don’t ask them what happened to Movies 1 through 42, okay?

Parker

(FilmDistrict) Jason Statham, Jennifer Lopez, Michael Chiklis, Nick Nolte. Parker is one of the best thieves in the world. He can afford to live by a code of ethics that he sticks to no matter what. He’s not the sort of fellow you want to cross. So when a group of fellow thieves do just that, Parker aims to get his own sort of justice. Even if he has to use Jennifer Lopez to help him get it.

Quartet

(Weinstein) Maggie Smith, Billy Connolly, Michael Gambon, Tom Courtenay. At a retirement home for opera singers, an annual concert commemorating Verdi’s birthday has been a major source for fundraising, which this year is particularly crucial because the home is in hot financial water. When a diva joins the home and refuses to sing in the concert even though her presence might mean the difference between the home surviving and all its residents being thrown out into the street, an uproar ensues. This is Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut, by the way.

Race 2

(UTV) Saif Ali Khan, Anil Kapoor, John Abraham, Deepika Padukone. After his partner and lover dies in a car bomb explosion, Ranveer vows to bring her killer to justice. To do that he’ll have to navigate through the criminal underworld of India and through the corrupt corridors of power where betrayal is always an option.